An Interview with Kari Moffat about the Film, “Mentored: Sexual Misconduct in Graduate School”

Hi Everyone!

In advance of this Thursday’s screening of the film (4:00 pm Drown 210), Mentored: Sexual Misconduct in Graduate School, I’m sharing a conversation I had with Kari Moffat, a member of the production team behind the documentary. The film is written, directed, and produced by Lehigh University students and in its promotional materials, Mentored is described as exploring “the dark side of graduate school”. The film “focuses on how the relationship between graduate students and their faculty mentors can lead to sexual misconduct. With misconduct cases being widespread at universities across the country, Mentored examines why these relationships can be so toxic and why it is still a commonly occurring situation.” As someone who is interested in the intersections of gender and education more broadly, I sat down with Kari to ask her some questions about the film team’s choice of this topic during the ongoing coming-to-terms with our own campus’ recent stories of sexual misconduct. We focused on the interview process and how she might imagine other projects continuing the work of this film.

Harvey Weinstein. Ad Infinitum. Ad nauseam.

Every time I sit down to write this blog post another sexual assault story breaks.

What follows are drafts I’ve started and stopped in an effort to document the scandals (plural) as new facts come to light.

Title IX

Recently, along with several members of my teaching cohort, I attended university-mandated Title IX training. Title IX, the federal law that protects students from discrimination on the basis of sex in educational programs that receive federal funds, prohibits sexual harassment and sexual violence. Our training outlined university compliance with Title IX, but it also introduced us to our new role as Mandatory Reporters. As Mandatory Reporters, we are required to report to the university if one our undergraduate students discloses to us that they were sexually assaulted. Lehigh’s policy stresses a commitment to believing these students when they make the admission and providing as much support as possible to survivors of sexual assault.